James Uster

Local Publications: A Strong Marketing Tool

I recently attended a Raine & Horne training session. One of the presenters was Tom Panos,


5 Responses to “Local Publications: A Strong Marketing Tool”

  • Greg  Vincent Greg Vincent says:

    Great first up post James. Welcome aboard GenYre = energy.

    I think a lot of agents don’t properly track the enquiry coming from print media to know if it is really having an effect or not. The reason why I say this is that most agents ask a buyer where they saw a property & most will say realestate.com.au or domain.com.au, but the real question that agents should be asking is “Where did you first see the property?”

    Print media, brochures, signboards are limited as to the amount of information that can be provided, so buyers who see agent’s offline media will go online to see more pictures, virtual tours, floorplans & more descriptive information provided on the web before they decide to contact the agent.

    So I still see a place for Local Publications, but I think that agents should track the response better & find ways to see if bigger really is better in print media or whether a smaller advertisement is just as effective?

  • We have been selling the majority of our listings through internet alone. It saves vendors lots of money and we can change the details within minutes.

    We just had a full page ad in the local paper today and have yet to receive a call on it.

    When 87% of people search for property on the net, why would you waste your money? It would be much better spent on quality online advertising and increasing SEO.

  • David Meadowcroft says:

    Earlier this year I ran 2 Open Houses in the one day at the same property – one time was advertised solely on the internet, the other solely in the local paper. I had 1 group through the local paper advertised inspection, and 11 through the internet advertised inspection. Maybe agents could do this a bit more to see if there is a trend (when I did this it was an error rather than a planned exercise)

  • I usually launch my auction programs via internet on a Tues then papers on a Thurs then open/papers on Saturday. Recently I had vendors who were keen to move quickly so I released to the internet Friday, emailed my database and held a 4pm open home on the Sunday. I had 22 groups through, all gathered from electronic means and maybe one or two neighbours from the signboard.

    The following weekend, after the paper exposure on the Thurs/Sat, I had an additional 22 new groups (4 x 2nd timers and 4 neighbours). My best effort to account for how many the paper attracted resulted in about 8.

    The cost of the internet attracted groups during week 1 was the cost of photography. The cost of the 8 groups attracted by the following week’s papers was about $1600. I think the papers will be virtually dead within 5 years.

  • Greg  Vincent Greg Vincent says:

    Here’s an interesting article I read about Newspaper Advertising Still being vital. http://www.sold-magazine.com.au/Articles/Newspaper-Advertising-Still-Vital?op=DownloadPdf.

    It’s also got some great tips in there for increasing Vendor Paid Advertising.

    As I mentioned in my previous comment, I agree with Tom’s comment in this article that agents should ask clients where they initially saw the property.

    Most people will say they saw the property on the web, but chances are that they saw a sign, brochure, print media ad & then went online to see more photos, virtual tours,etc of the property.

    Unless you ask the right questions when handling enquiries, you’ll never be able to get a true reflection of how effective your offline media marketing actually is.

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